ANALYZING ICONIC IMAGES
In their seminal work, Reading images: The grammar of
visual design, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) set out the
first social semiotic framework for analyzing images, noting
that “We intend to provide inventories of the major compositional
structures which have become established as
conventions in the course of the history of visual semiotics,
and to analyze how they are used to produce meaning by
contemporary image-makers” (p. 1). Kress and van Leeuwen’s
book was a first step in establishing visual social
semiotics for imagery in Western culture, and analysts in
this field are now adding to the framework through applied
research and additional theory. (See Kress and van Leeuwen
2001 for the development of an overarching social
semiotic theory for all types of multi-modal communications.)
Essentially, the Kress and van Leeuwen framework
recognizes that an image performs, simultaneously, three
kinds of meta-semiotic tasks to create meaning. These tasks
are called the representational metafunction, interpersonal
metafunction, and compositional metafunction.
This section of the article addresses the major elements
of each metafunction, briefly analyzes different Web site
images according to each metafunction, and provides a list
of useful questions for basic analysis of the metafunction.
At the end of the article, one of the images is used to
demonstrate how the three metafunctions work together to
create visual meaning for viewers.
I have included a variety of types and styles of images
to help professional communicators working in different
fields who wish to undertake visual analyses. It is important
to note that these analyses apply visual social semiotic
theory from the perspective of Western culture in general
and North American culture in particular. As such, it may
not be relevant to other traditions that have developed
different conventions of imagery and reading.